Re: End of an Era

There will be plenty of eulogies from people who knew William F. Buckley better than I did--and certainly from those who agreed with him more than I did. But he was an honest man, an actual conservative--who, in the end, was quietly appalled by George W. Bush's radicalism, in Iraq and when it came to the federal budget. He was a lovely writer, of course. His book, The Unmaking of a Mayor, an account of his own wry run for mayor of New York in 1965, is not only hilarious but also an early--and accurate--critique of the political correctness, unionized sclerosis and wasteful bureaucracy that almost killed the world's greatest city in the 1960s and 1970s. He was an excellent man. My condolences to all the Buckleys.